Another Boeing 757 Nose Radome Lightning Puncture

The Boeing 757 nose radome has experienced several lightning punctures since entering into commercial service in 1983. A picture of the typical damage is shown below. This radome was designed and certified to earlier FAA lightning requirements that utilized ground-based lightning strike data to create an inflight lightning environment. This led to the metal bar lightning diverters on the side of the radome being too short to protect the radome from some inflight lightning events.

Several radome manufacturers, such as NORDAM and Saint-Gobain, offer STC’d radomes that utilize a combination of metal bar diverters and segmented lightning diverters that offers better lightning protection. The questions remains if the current operators of the 757 will update to the better protect radomes.